Shelfology Book Pairing

by Neal Stephenson

The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions. Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30 U-Stor-It. He spends most of his time goggled in to the Metaverse, where his avatar is legendary. But in the club known as The Black Sun, his fellow hackers are being felled by a weird new drug called Snow Crash that reduces them to nothing more than a jittering cloud of bad digital karma (and IRL, a vegetative state). Investigating the Infocalypse leads Hiro all the way back to the beginning of language itself, with roots in an ancient Sumerian priesthood. He’ll be joined by Y.T., a fearless teenaged skateboard courier. Together, they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination.

by Neal Stephenson

When the moon blows up, the Earth's atmosphere starts to go through changes that will eventually render its surface uninhabitable. In preparation, the nations of the Earth send an ark of humans to an international space station. But it too isn't immune to the galactic catastrophe and many people are lost. When stability is reached, only seven humans remain, all of them women. Thirty thousand years later, two peoples exist: those who survived on Earth, living rustic, primitive lives, and those who derived from the Seven Eves of the space station - sophisticated, organised sects looking to colonise Earth.